Method and apparatus for high throughput catalysts screening and optimization

ABSTRACT

The present invention relates to an apparatus and a process for the high-throughput, quick screening, optimization, regeneration, reduction and activation of catalysts. More specifically, the present invention is a method and apparatus to quickly screen, optimize and regenerate multiple fast deactivating catalysts while maintaining a predefined range of time-on-stream.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0001] The present invention relates to an apparatus and a process forthe high-throughput, quick screening, optimization, regeneration,reduction and activation of catalysts. More specifically, the presentinvention is a method and apparatus to quickly screen, optimize andregenerate multiple fast deactivating catalysts.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0002] While many methods have been developed for high throughputscreening of catalysts, not one of these previous apparatus or methodshave provided the ability to test one catalyst or set of catalysts whilesimultaneously treating a different catalyst or set of catalysts with adifferent treat gas. In fast deactivating catalyst, the presentinvention significantly improves and reduces catalyst screening andoptimization times. Although not as critical in stable catalysts withvery long deactivation times, the apparatus and method of the presentinvention still could provide for improvements in catalyst screening andoptimization.

[0003] In many industrially important reaction systems, the catalystsdeactivate on a time scale that is shorter than or comparable to thereaction time scale. The present invention is designed forhigh-throughput evaluation of fast-deactivating catalysts such as thoseused in cracking of naphtha and gas oils, methanol to olefins processes,hydrocarbon dehydrogenation over noble metal catalysts, partialoxidation with metal oxides among many others. The deactivation iscaused by such nonlimiting mechanisms as coking, fouling, poisoning,reduction or phase transformations among others. The time scales ofdeactivation range from milliseconds to minutes.

[0004] Previous high throughput catalyst systems are inadequate for fastdeactivating catalysts because they cannot measure the catalystperformance in the reactor under the same time on stream (TOS), aprerequisite for comparing fast deactivating catalysts. Further, theyare also inadequate in that fast-deactivating catalysts requirepretreatment, regeneration, reactivation and reduction under properconditions. This method is applicable to any standard definition of TOS,for example, clock time, weight of reactant processes per weight ofcatalyst, volume of reactant processed per volume of catalyst, gram ofdesired products produced per gram of catalyst, among many others. Oneof ordinary skill in the art would be familiar with other standard formsof TOS.

[0005] The patent literature abounds with high-throughput catalysttesting reactor designs. Many of these designs feature parallel reactorsable to provide a common feed to the reactors sequentially or inparallel. Many previous inventions, for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,959,297and WO 00/29844, present catalyst screening methods placing numeroussmall samples on a very thin substrate. While this method was adequatefor stable catalysts, these methods were not suitable for fastdeactivating catalysts as the samples were not tested at the same TOS.Also, these substrates do not allow for reaction at one substrate sitewhile regeneration, reduction or some other processes occur at a secondsubstrate site. Moreover, substrate designs would not allow for thecareful individualized control of high temperatures and high pressuresnecessary for many catalytic systems.

[0006] Another problem of the above inventions is that they would not beeffective for fast deactivating catalysts as their reactant recoverysystems were not sensitive enough to recover sufficient product oververy short exposure periods. WO 98/15969 solved this problem byproposing feed and recovery tubes that securely attached themselvessequentially to each element of the substrate. However, this inventionstill could not control the TOS and space velocity precisely enoughnecessary for fast-deactivating catalysts, nor would they have theability for a second process to proceed on other substrate members.

[0007] U.S. Pat. No. 4,099,923 solved the high pressure and hightemperature problems by sending a common feed to numerous parallelreactors. U.S. Pat. No. 6,149,882 developed a parallel reactor systemthat ensured the same flow rate through a catalyst by placing balancingflow restrictors between the common feed and the reactors and thensending the output to parallel detectors.

[0008] However, the '882 invention would not be effective for fastdeactivating catalysts. With additional restrictions and balancingefforts, the TOS for each reactor could theoretically be controlled byusing the '882 patent invention sequentially, as opposed to the paralleloperations suggested. However, the device taught by the '882 inventionstill would not be useful for fast deactivating catalysts because thecatalysts not actually being tested was not maintained in an initializedstate (or individually optimized states) by a treatment gas other thanthe feed gas.

[0009] Although many high throughput catalysts screening systems havebeen developed, none of them would be effective for fast deactivatingcatalysts as they did not simultaneously control TOS and maintain theother catalysts in a ready condition to be tested. Further, thesesystems were inflexible even for stable catalysts in that they would notallow treatment of different catalysts in the parallel arrays bydifferent feeds or treat streams.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

[0010] The present invention relates to a system to properly screen andoptimize fast deactivating catalysts by controlling TOS and keeping theother test candidates in an initialized condition ready for rapidtesting. Moreover, the present invention also provides the ability toregenerate and reactivate catalysts in the same apparatus that is alsotesting other catalysts allowing for far higher throughput of testingand optimization. The present invention also provides an advantage forrelatively stable catalysts in that they also may be tested, regeneratedand reactivated in the same system without being removed from thetesting rig, again significantly improving the efficiency of thecatalyst testing and optimization process.

[0011] Preferably, the present invention provides a system and a methodfor the simultaneous testing, initialization, regeneration andreactivation of fast-deactivating catalysts while maintaining a constantTOS (within the range of prespecified TOS's of experimental interest)for all candidate catalysts and providing one or more detection systemsthat can monitor one, more than one or all of the reactor outputs. Inthis manner catalyst activity and selectivity may be compared at thesame TOS.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0012]FIG. 1 schematically illustrates a cross-section of this deviceapplied to a two input stream, six-reactor, one detection stream system.

[0013]FIG. 2 graphically demonstrates how the first order rate constantvaries with the TOS (as measured in minutes) for a fast deactivatingcatalyst.

[0014]FIG. 3 graphically demonstrates how the first order rate constantvaries with the TOS (as measured in grams reactant per gram of catalyst)for a fast deactivating catalyst.

[0015]FIG. 4 graphically demonstrates how the first order rate constantvaries with the TOS (as measured in grams reactant converted per gram ofcatalyst) for a fast deactivating catalyst.

[0016]FIG. 5 graphically demonstrates how the selectivity varies withthe TOS (as measured in minutes) for a fast deactivating catalyst.

[0017]FIG. 6 graphically demonstrates how the selectivity varies withthe TOS (as measured in grams reactant per gram of catalyst) for a fastdeactivating catalyst.

[0018]FIG. 7 graphically demonstrates how the selectivity varies withthe TOS (as measured in grams reactant converted per grams of catalyst)for a fast deactivating catalyst.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0019] Fast screening and optimization of catalysts has been longdesired in many industries. Although numerous high-throughput catalystsscreening inventions have been proposed, none of them provide anefficient method of screening fast-deactivating catalysts. Each of theprevious inventions failed to properly control TOS, maintain each ofto-be-tested catalysts in a desired pre-tested state, nor did theyprovide a method for regeneration, reactivation or alternate treatmentwhile in the testing system.

[0020] In testing fast deactivating exploratory catalysts, it isessential that all candidate catalysts be tested at the same TOS.Previous reactor array designs would not provide meaningful data forfast deactivating catalysts. For example, for an array of sixty reactorswith a ten second for product analysis, the TOS differences between thefirst reactor and the last reactor in a common feed system may be aslong as 10 minutes. For fast-deactivating catalysts with a deactivationtime scale in the order of seconds or shorter, this delay would providemeaningless data. The only previous solution was to present each reactorwith its own monitoring device, which was far too costly with fastacting GC or mass spectrometers.

[0021] The present invention consists of an array of reactors with atleast one, and preferably two sets of selection valve systems, the firstdistributing various input feed streams, the second porting the reactoroutput streams, and a detection device, such as a fast-scanning massspectrometer and/or a fast-response GC. At any given time, any of thereactors may be exposed to any individual feed streams. Thus, onereactor (or more) may be exposed to the feed stream containing thereactant of interest (the “on-duty” reactors), while the catalyst bedsin the other reactors may be pretreated, regenerated, rejuvenated,stripped, reduced, sulfided or heated under inert environmentalconditions (the “off-duty” reactors). One of ordinary skill in the artmay easily determine other uses for various other input streams to thecatalyst beds.

[0022] Generally for catalysts, the various pretreatment processconditions are different than the actual catalyst evaluation ordeactivation process. The regeneration of catalysts may be carried outin the present invention. As a non-limiting example, if the catalystdeactivation is due to coke deposition, such as in naphtha cracking andmethanol-to-olefin (MTO) reaction, the coked catalysts are treated withan oxygen-containing gas to burn off the coke in an “off-duty” reactor.When catalyst deactivation is due to poisoning by low-concentrationcontaminants in the hydrocarbon feed, the deactivated catalysts arerejuvenated by desorption with an appropriately chosen gas stream andconditions. The deactivation rate parameters (adsorption capacity andthe absorption constant) may be obtained by the TOS data using well knowadsorption theories, depending on the extent of the reversibility of theadsorption process.

[0023] While monitoring catalytic properties of the “on-duty” reactors,extending the pretreatment process does not harm the activity andselectivity of the catalyst in the off-duty reactor. Thus, the presentinvention may even be designed for manual switching from pre-treatmentto evaluation under the feed of interest, or, preferably, this processmay be automated.

[0024] The present invention provides an apparatus and method toaccurately control TOS for each reactor, thus determining the activityand selectivity in the full range of TOS in a multiple, high-throughputsystem. The TOS preferably will be controlled from to 0 to 90%deactivation, most preferably from 0 to 50% deactivation. The presentinvention has the added advantage of being able to test one catalystwhile simultaneously performing one or more separate processes on otherreactors in the high-throughput system. Preferably, the present systemallows for the accurate testing (by controlling the TOS) of one catalystin one reactor of a high throughput system containing many reactors,while simultaneously allowing pretreatment, regeneration, rejuvenation,stripping, reduction, sulfiding or heating under an inert environment inany one or more of the other reactors in the high-throughput system.

[0025] More preferably, the present system allows for the testing offast deactivating catalysts by accurately controlling TOS in one reactorin a multi-reactor high-throughput system, and sending the reactionproduct stream from that reactor to one or more fast-response deviceswhile simultaneously either testing the other catalysts with their own(possibly variant) feed stream (and simultaneously sending those outputstreams to different detectors), or providing pretreatment,regeneration, rejuvenation, stripping, reduction, sulfiding or heatingunder an inert environment to the other reactors in the high-throughputsystem.

[0026] In one embodiment, the present invention is an apparatus forevaluating catalysts that comprises:

[0027] Two or more reaction vessels, each vessel having at least oneinlet and outlet;

[0028] Each inlet being in direct communication with at least one feeddistribution system

[0029] Each distribution system having at least two incoming streams,the distribution system being able to channel any one or more of theincoming streams to any one or more of the reaction vessels

[0030] At least one detector that is in communication with any one ormore of the output streams.

[0031] In another embodiment, the present invention is a method oftesting catalysts by:

[0032] Placing at least one catalyst in at least two or more reactorvessels, thereby comprising a high-throughput system.

[0033] Distributing a first input stream, selected from at least twoinput streams to at least one reactor vessel, while porting a secondinput stream to one or more of the other reactor vessels in the highthroughput system.

[0034] Monitoring the output of at least one reactor vessel.

[0035] In another non-limiting embodiment, the present invention isdesigned for high-throughput evaluation of fast-deactivating catalysts.After being charged to the reactors, the candidate catalysts are testedsequentially in a pre-programmed order so that at any time the feedcontaining at least one reactant of interest enters only one reactor,the “on-duty” reactor. Each of the reactors may have mass flowcontrollers to provide exact flow of any of the feed streams to any ofthe reactors. The GC/mass spectrometer monitors the reaction products ofthe on-duty reactor until the catalyst activity drops to a preset level,for example half of the original activity. During this process, thecatalysts in the off-duty reactor may be rejuvenated, regenerated,sulfided, activated or reduced as necessary to prepare them for theirexposure to the feed containing at least one reactant of interest.

[0036] In a more specific, non limiting example, a reactor array of 16reactors in a single unit accommodates two stream selection valvessending two different feed streams to the reactors. The 16 units aremounted into two or more separately heated metal block to provide aconstant, but individualized, temperature to all reactors. The catalystloading in each reactor can vary from several tens of grams to less than1 mg. In this example, the weight hourly space velocity ranges from 0.1to 1000 g feed/g cat/hr. The reactor temperatures vary from 150 to 700°C., and reactor pressure varies from atmospheric to 1000 psig. Thereactions may be carried out as single or multi-phase.

[0037] The fifteen off-duty reactors are provided an inert,non-hydrocarbon containing or hydrocarbon-containing stream through astream selection valve. To provide similar flow rates to the off-dutyreactors using a single mass controller, the variations in conductiverestrictions is accounted for by installing individualized restrictorsupstream of each off-duty reactor. In actual operations, these off-dutyreactors would be kept in a readiness state so that the catalyticproperties may be instantly measured.

[0038] The first stream selection valve ensures that the feed ofinterest is only fed to the on-duty reactor. The feed of interest to theon-duty reactor may be provided directly to the reactor through thefirst stream selection valve, or may first be introduced to a chamberfor dilution or mixing with other fluids or poisons before entering thestream selection valve. As mass flow rate must be accurately measured toproduce meaningful data, the stream selection valve porting feed to theon-duty reactor has its own mass flow controller. The stream selectionvalve simultaneously provides a different steam (inert, non-hydrocarbonor hydrocarbon) to the off-duty reactors. A second stream selectionvalve may be used to direct the output stream from a specific reactor tothe monitoring device.

[0039] The on-duty reactor is fed for a predetermined TOS, with itsoutput being directed to the monitoring device. At preselectedintervals, the two selection valves are simultaneous rotated placing anew reactor on-duty, and taking the previously on-duty reactor off-duty.The output stream of the new on-duty reactor is ported to the monitoringdevice. The two stream selection valves are not required to be rotatedsimultaneously. In some embodiments it may be preferred to disconnecton-duty reactor from the monitoring device, allowing an inert gas topurge the monitoring stream, and then later place another reactoron-duty. Similarly, if the valves are rotated simultaneously, the outletstream from the on-duty reactor may be diverted from monitoring system,replaced by an inert purge. When the purge is completed, the valves maythen be simultaneously switched porting the feed of interest to the nextreactor interest allowing that reactor's outlet stream to be directed tothe monitoring device that was previously purged. The mass flowcontroller dedicated to the on-duty reactor ensures the same spacevelocity and TOS.

[0040] The present invention provides superiority over the previousknown devices in that the each reactor may undergo its own process in ahigh-throughput manner. Thus, while the on-duty reactor is testing thefeed stream of interest, the off-duty reactors may be reactivated andkept in the ready state for fast catalyst testing. Further, this systemprovides for a matching TOS for each reactor as it becomes the on-dutyreactor. Finally, the present invention allows for the rapid incrementalmonitoring of change in feed composition on various catalysts. Moreover,the candidate catalysts in the off-duty reactors can be pretreated atindividually optimized conditions. This is an important feature of thepresent high-throughput system since different catalysts requiredifferent pretreatment conditions. And it is important to evaluate acandidate catalyst at its own optimum pretreatment conditions.

EXAMPLE 1

[0041] The inventor used the above method to produce a completeperformance history of a methanol-to-olefin catalyst containing 40 wt %SAPO-34. Table 1 shows the catalyst performance at 450° C. and methanolpartial pressure at 20 to 40 psia as a function of time-on-stream (TOS).The run was carried out with weight hourly space velocities from 258 to831 g/g/hr (row B in Table 1). Methanol conversion to hydrocarbon andselectivity to combined ethylene (C₂ ⁼) and propylene (C₃ ⁼) are in rowsD and E respectively. There are 11 periods for analysis. Row F shows theamount of methanol passing through one gram of catalyst in each of theanalysis period. From these data one can calculate the TOS in term ofminutes, gram methanol fed per gram catalyst (g MeOH/g cat) and grammethanol converted per gram catalyst (g MeOH converted/g cat). The firstorder rate constant, k, is calculated according to the followingequation:

k=(weight hourly space velocity)*ln(1/(1-x/100))*(density ofcatalyst/density of gaseous methanol at reaction conditions)

[0042] where x is the methanol conversion in wt %, in is the natural logfunction, density of catalyst=1.5 g/cc and densities of MeOH at reactionconditions are 0.00073 and 0.00147 g/cc for methanol partial pressure of20 and 40 psia respectively. Methanol density is calculated from theideal gas law

[0043]FIG. 2 shows in a short time, within 2 minutes TOS, the catalystexperiences both activation and deactivation. The first order rateconstant increases from 88 to 196.4 and then drops to 8.9 sec⁻¹. FIG. 3is similar to FIG. 2 except that the TOS is defined as a dimensionlesstime in terms of gram of methanol fed per gram of catalyst. FIG. 4 isalso similar to FIG. 3 except that the TOS is expressed in terms of gramof methanol converted per gram of catalyst. The interconversion betweenthe three different TOS is shown in Table 1. FIGS. 5, 6 and 7 shows theprime olefin (ethylene plus propylene) selectivity as a function of thethree different forms of TOS. The prime olefin selectivity increaseswith TABLE 1 Catalyst performance as a function of time-on-stream APeriod between analyses 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 B Space velocity g/g/hr302 302 302 302 258 258 323 390 492 831 258 C MeOH partial pressure,psia 20 20 20 20 40 40 40 40 40 40 40 D MeOH conversion to hydrocarbons,x, 40.14 63.96 67.82 68.20 91.66 88.63 74.86 41.35 18.46 6.20 11.43 wt %E C₂ ⁼ and C₃ ⁼ selectivity, wt % 67.64 73.24 77.09 80.76 81.96 84.8485.38 83.96 78.82 80.11 83.30 F g MeOH/g cat at each period 0.52 0.520.52 0.52 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04 1.04 G Time spent at eachperiod, min 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.10 0.24 0.24 0.19 0.16 0.13 0.08 0.24 H gMeOH converted/g 0.209 0.333 0.353 0.355 0.953 0.922 0.779 0.430 0.1920.065 0.119 cat at each period I Time-on-stream, min 0.10 0.21 0.31 0.410.66 0.90 1.09 1.25 1.38 1.45 1.69 J Time-on-stream, g MeOH/g cat 0.521.04 1.56 2.08 3.12 4.16 5.2 6.24 7.28 8.32 9.36 K Time-on-stream, gMeOH 0.209 0.541 0.894 1.249 2.202 3.124 3.902 4.332 4.524 4.589 4.708converted/g cat L ln(1/(1 − x/100)) 0.51 1.02 1.13 1.15 2.48 2.17 1.380.53 0.20 0.06 0.12 M First order rate constant, k, 1/sec 88 175 194.4196.4 181.7 159 126.4 59 28.5 15.1 8.9

[0044] TOS but later decreases. This example shows the importance ofobtaining a complete performance history of the catalyst in order tocompare catalyst performance when catalyst deactivation is fast.

EXAMPLE2

[0045] The present invention was used to provide kinetic parameters forcatalyst poisoning, specifically organonitrogen poisoning of twohydrodesulfurization (HDS) catalysts. The first catalyst was acommercial sulfided CoMo/Al₂O₃—SiO₂ catalysts. The second is anunsupported CoMo sulfide catalyst. Two feed mixtures were prepared. FeedA contained 0.8 wt % 4,6 diethyldibenzothiophene (46DEDBT) in dodecane.Feed B contained 80 ppm of total nitrogen (N) as 3-ethylcarbazole and0.8 wt % 46DEDBT. The conditions tested were 265° C. at 250 psig and ahydrogen treat gas rate of 650 SCF/B. For each catalyst, the teststarted with feed A to line out the catalyst activity in the absence oforganonitrogen poison. Then the reactor was switched to feed B.

[0046] As expected, switching to feed B caused a rapid decline in HDSactivity due to site blocking by the nitrogen species. Two key poisoningrate parameters were determined using the Langmuir theory as describedby H. Scott Fogler, Elements of Chemical Reaction Engineering, 2. Ed.,Prentiss Hall, 1992, p. 256. The adsorption capacity of the bulk CoMocatalyst was found to be 0.0044 g N/g cat, compared with 0.0085 g N/gcat for the supported CoMo/Al₂O₃—SiO₂ catalysts.

What is claimed is:
 1. A high-throughput device for evaluating catalystscomprising: two or more reaction vessels, each said reactor vesselhaving at least one inlet stream and at least one outlet stream saidinlet stream being in direct communication with at least one inletdistribution system, said inlet distribution system having at least twofeed streams, said inlet distribution system being able to channel anyone or more of said feed streams to any one or more of said reactorvessels or eliminate feed to any reactor vessel, any or all of saidoutlet streams being directed to at least one monitor.
 2. The device ofclaim 1 wherein said outlet streams are directed by an outletdistribution system.
 3. The device of claim 2 wherein said outletdistribution system ports any of said outlet streams to any one or moreof said monitors.
 4. The device of claim 3 wherein one of said feedstreams is a feed stream containing at least one reactant of interest.5. The device of claim 4 wherein one of said feed streams, other thansaid feed stream containing at least one reactant of interest, is astream selected from the group consisting of inert fluids, rejuvenationfluids, regeneration fluids, sulfiding fluids, activation fluids,stripping fluids, poisoning fluids or reduction fluids
 6. The device ofclaim 5 wherein the monitor is one or more monitors selected from thegroup consisting of gas spectrometers, mass spectrometers, IR, gaschromatograph, UV, liquid chromatography, flow meters, elementalanalyzers, hydrogen, steam, hydrogen sulfide, oxygen, carbon monoxide orcarbon dioxide monitors.
 7. The device of claim 1 wherein said inletdistribution system is one or more valves.
 8. The device of claim 7wherein said inlet distribution system is a singular valve, wherein saidsingular valve ports any one or more of said feed streams to any one ormore said reactor vessels.
 9. The device as in claim 2 wherein saidoutlet distribution system is one or more valves.
 10. The device as inclaim 9 wherein said outlet distribution system is a singular valve,wherein said singular valve ports any one or more of said outlet streamsto any one or more said monitors.
 11. The device as in claim 10 whereinsaid outlet distribution system is a singular outlet distribution valve,wherein said singular outlet distribution valve ports any one or more ofsaid outlet streams to any one or more said monitors.
 12. Ahigh-throughput device for evaluating catalysts comprising: a reactorvessel array of at least four reactors, each reactor having at least oneinlet and outlet stream at least two inlet stream selection distributionsystems porting at least two feed streams to said reactors, wherein afirst inlet stream distribution system ports a feed containing at leastone reactant of interest to at least one on-duty reactor vessel, andwherein at least one inlet stream distribution system other than saidfirst inlet stream distribution system ports a stream selected from thegroup consisting of inert fluids, rejuvenation fluids, regenerationfluids, sulfiding fluids, activation fluids, stripping fluid, poisoningfluids or reduction fluids to at least one off-duty reactor vessel,which is a reactor vessel other than said on-duty reactor, and saidoutlet stream of said on-duty reactor is monitored by one or moreinstruments selected from the group comprising of gas spectrometer, massspectrometer, IR, gas chromatograph, UV, liquid chromatography, flowmeters, elemental analyzers, hydrogen, steam, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide,carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide monitors. wherein no two of saidreactor vessels may simultaneously be said on-duty reactor vessel. 13.The device as in claim 2 wherein at least one of said feed streams isfeed containing at least one reactant of interest and the other feedstreams are treat gas, not containing a reactant of interest, said feedcontaining at least one reactant of interest being ported to on-dutyreactor vessels said pretreatment streams being ported to off-dutyreactor vessels wherein said inlet and outlet distribution systems arecoordinated so that each on-duty reactor's TOS is controlled to apredefined range.
 14. A method of testing fast deactivating catalystscomprising: loading at least one catalyst of interest into at least tworeactor vessels, each reactor vessel having an inlet and an outletdirecting at least one feed stream containing at least one reactant ofinterest to an inlet distribution system directing at least one treatstream, not containing a reactant of interest, to said inletdistribution system porting at least one of said feed streams containingat least one reactant of interest from said inlet distributing system toone reactor's said inlet, wherein said reactor having said feed streamcontaining at least one reactant of interest is ported to it is known asan on-duty reactor, porting at least one of said treat streams from saidinlet distributing system to at least one other reactor's said inletwherein said other reactor is not the on-duty reactor, and wherein saidother reactor is known as an off-duty reactor, porting said on-dutyreactor's outlet stream to a monitor manipulating said inletdistribution system such that at least one of said feed streamscontaining at least one reactant of interest is directed to a newon-duty reactor, previously an off-duty reactor, and at least one saidtreat stream is directed to a new off-duty reactor, previously anon-duty reactor, wherein the TOS of each on-duty reactor is controlledto a predefined range.
 15. A method of testing fast deactivatingcatalysts comprising: loading at least one catalyst of interest into atleast two reactor vessels, each reactor vessel having an inlet and anoutlet directing at least one feed stream containing at least onereactant of interest to an inlet distribution system directing at leastone treat stream, not containing a reactant of interest, to a secondinlet distribution system porting at least one of said feed streamscontaining at least one reactant of interest from said inletdistributing system to one reactor's said inlet, wherein said reactorhaving said feed stream containing at least one reactant of interest isported to it is known as an on-duty reactor, porting at least one ofsaid treat streams from said second inlet distributing system to atleast one other reactor's said inlet wherein said other reactor is notthe on-duty reactor, and wherein said other reactor is known as anoff-duty reactor, porting said on-duty reactor's outlet stream to amonitor manipulating said first and second inlet distribution systemssuch that at least one of said feed streams containing at least onereactant of interest is directed to a new on-duty reactor, previously anoff-duty reactor, and at least one said treat streams is directed to anew off-duty reactor, previously an on-duty reactor, wherein the TOS ofeach on-duty reactor is controlled to a predefined range.
 16. The methodas in claim 14 further comprising an outlet distribution system whereinsaid any one or more of said reactor's said outlet streams are directedto said outlet distribution system which then distributes said outletstreams further to one or more monitors or receptacles.
 17. The methodas in claim 15 further comprising an outlet distribution system whereinsaid any one or more of said reactor's said outlet streams are directedto said outlet distribution system which then distributes said outletstreams further to one or more monitors or receptacles.